Brian Carroll gave some interesting advice in an interview with Chris Coch at ITSMA. He talked about creating a marketing funnel, and how this differed from a sales funnel. In brief, his interview covered five points:
- Create a marketing funnel.
- Create a universal definition of a lead.
- Use the phone.
- Ask about goals—don’t sell.
- Define lead nurturing—and the right people to nurture.
The full interview is here.
If we think about how this applies to social media, it’s something we need to consider (somewhat) differently.
You might be blogging or podcasting for lead generation. If so, how are you helping sort your audience from your leads? If you’re making media, that’s a starting point to a conversation. Are you asking your audience about goals? If you need to further qualify a lead built from your online efforts, is the phone the next step, or are there steps in between?
The idea of a marketing funnel, where one builds up even more information and distills even more who might be a prospective customer or client, versus who is simply enjoying the media, is something worth considering for your business. Have you looked at your media that way? How will you discern who’s just consuming your media versus who’s interested in doing business with you? What comes next after your blog post or video?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Related articles by Zemanta
- How Content Marketing Will Shake the Tree
- Social Media Does Not Replace Marketing Strategy
- Reflections and new directions for Marketing Impressions
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=32ce06cb-af0e-431f-bcc3-81ecd75b21cf)
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.
sign up for the 
subscribe to the 
follow Chris on 
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with the metaphor of a sales funnel, Chris. The question is, What are the specific measurable conversion goals? Is it a link back to your blog or product? A favorable mention at a later time? Becoming friends with the blogger and hanging out at conferences? A sales funnel is quantifiable with sales figures, social media marketing has more amorphous goals.
I think a big key to success is communication and making sure everybody is working off a common definition of a lead vs. a prospect, etc. Companies have different definitions and criteria for defining these categories.
Something that may be of interest to you… mega entrepreneur John Assaraf from “The Secret” and author of “The Answer” is holding a free conference call August 20th about how to condition your mind to reach entrepreneurial success. I’d highly suggest listening in. Go here for details and registration… http://www.JohnAssaraf.com/hia/challenge.htm?s=hiac2008
John is also providing free chapter downloads from “The Answer” here… http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
“Ask about goals—don’t sell.”
Very true…rather than shoving you services down a potential clients throat, explore the ways in which your services can help them achieve their goals.
Thanks for sharing Chris, that’s a valuable idea. The concept of a Marketing Funnel is proof the line between marketing and every other department, sales, web design, etc. is fading away in this service driven economy. Marketing’s responsibility as other departments are changing and evolving.
I agree with Adam; a Marketing Funnel is a good idea but is worthless without a direct correlation between the prospects in the funnel and the value of the products (for B2B) an organization sells.
The main problem is B2B Marketers have not discovered the right tool to capture Lead Value based on their products. Imagine telling the CEO your social marketing efforts resulted in $65 Million in lead value last month…it is possible and actually quite easy.
Dale
EchoQuote
B2B Call to Action Blog